The Gnostic Paul; heresy, secrecy, Christ myth, entheogens, fatedness

A great principle for discernment is this negative
technique: look at the theology that the "Church Fathers" insisted
on, and list all the ideas they are most concerned with rejecting as
heresy.The points the Church Fathers
insist on are the core principles of all that is false, deluded, and a
lie.The heresies they hate, or the
heresy, is the truth.This book makes
it clear what the Church Fathers affirmed and rejected, and what the
Valentinian gnostics asserted and rejected.

The great news The Gnostic Paul represents to me is that all
the theological ideas divide very cleanly into two groups, which matches what
the holy spirit revealed directly to me the day I reached the fork in the road,
where I saw a choice bifurcate in vision-logic space: either I could hang onto
certain premises and remain in a magic muddle, or firmly reject those premises
and have everything fall into simple clarity and integrated sense.

The book The Gnostic Paul by Elaine Pagels has a lot to
offer for the Christ-myth theory.The
book explains the Valentinian gnostic reading of Paul's early epistles."Jews" means literalists, the
uninitiated, lower Christians."Greeks"
means spiritualists, the initiated, higher Christians.Paul encouraged the higher Christians to
feel united or married with the lower Christians.

The book would greatly benefit from a 2-column listing of
the ideas the Valentinians associated with the higher and lower
Christians.As a philosopher and
theorist of ego death who is looking for a rational reading of the Christian
scriptures, I agree with everything that falls into the group of ideas the
Valentinians associated with higher Christians, and I disagree with all the
ideas that fall into the group of ideas the Valentinians associated with lower
Christians.

The two sets of doctrines -- the book The Gnostic Paul
divides the religious ideas as follows, from the Valentinian reading of Paul's
early writings:

Higher Christians

Lower Christians

"Greeks"

The religion of Heresy

Early Paul

The Truth, wisdom, enlightenment

The initiated, adults

A secret mystery is revealed to some apostles, but not to
other apostles

The sacrament of apolytrosis (apo- can mean after-, post-,
and separate redemption) in addition to common eucharist

Reject idea of responsible moral agency and idea of our
culpability of sin/guilt

The apple was a gift of gnosis

All blame is placed on the Ground, not us

No death on the Cross (it was mythic and could be seen as
a pseudo-death)

Sacrifice is mythic, mental, conceptual, a mental experience

No bodily resurrection

Mythic Christ

Belief in higher and lower Christians (with a principled
respect for the lower)

No point in moral-reward heaven or moral-punishment hell

We are spirits, controlled by God

"Jews"

The Orthodox religion

Peter, The Church Fathers and their forged later Paul

The Lie, error, darkness, foolishness

The uninitiated, children

No secret mystery; all apostles have authority through
simple ordinary seeing of miraculous resurrection

The common eucharist, only

Salvation, baptism

Spiritual enslavement to morality -- with delusion of free
will and choosing faith oneself

Belief in responsible moral agency and our culpability for
sin/guilt

All blame is placed on us

The apple was bad

Jesus died on the Cross

Sacrifice is bodily, bloody, magically effective, physical

Bodily resurrection

Supernaturalist Jesus

Disbelief in higher level of Christianity -- to obtain
unity and harmony of the Church

Moral-reward heaven and moral-punishment hell exist, for
the responsible agent/soul

We are souls, controlled by ourselves

Each point I listed above should have page references to
Pagel's book to prove that the ideas break out this way in her book.

An important reason why Christ-myth scholars should read
this book is that Pagels shows how to read the scriptures in a 2-valued
ambiguous way, where the meaning deliberately toggles between two distinct
readings.It's not just that Paul was
misinterpreted; Paul deliberately wrote in an encoded, ambiguous way that flips
between the two conceptual systems.If
people were confused, it is because Paul meant for them to be confused and
carefully chose his words so that they could support both readings: literal and
spiritual.The epistles were written as
encoded mysteries and should be read as such.

I suspect that Paul deliberately wanted to withhold the
higher view from the uninitiated, to protect and preserve the delusion of the
ego just as we protect children and just as the Greek mystery religions
forbade, by punishment of death, publically revealing the things shown in the
mysteries.So he wrote in a way that
would be read in a supernatural, Literalist way but could be read as a
non-supernatural, mystery-religion, mystic allegory.

Associating truth and error with Biblical characters

This book, supported by others I've read, clearly divides
theological doctrines and philosophies into two distinct camps: that of Peter,
and that of the authentic Pauline and the Johannine (without the later-added
ending of John, possibly moved from Mark).I understand "John" as possibly an epithet for Mary
Magdalene.I'm not sure where James
fits -- does he have full understanding of the truth?So the characters are clearly falling into this division:

Those who understand truth:

Early Paul

John

Mary Magdalene

Those who do not understand truth:

Peter

Later "Paul"

(Pagels in this book does not discuss John or Mary.)

From what I know so far, I'd prefer calling these two
positions "Mary Magdalene" and "Peter".But since I'm just coming down from having
read this book, I'll call the positions "Early Paul vs. Peter".I could also call them "Early Paul vs.
Later Paul", understanding the first as authentic and the later as a
Church Fathers' attempt to refute the earlier wisdom.

The strongest feeling I have -- the rock of certainty -- is
that Peter represents everything that is false in Christianity.Peter is the foundation of the Church of
Error and The Lie.Peter is a very
simple story: he is all fallacy, all error.The book The Unfinished Gospel explains that the book of John was
originally entirely anti-Peter.Mark
was pro-Peter.To make the book of John
seem pro-Peter, the Church Fathers moved the pro-Peter ending from Mark to
John, where it artificially sits while leaving Mark without an ending (our
oldest Mark manuscripts lack any mention of the Resurrection).

Also, I can read early Paul as implying that only the mind
is real; the physical world is an illusion projected by the mind.That's a principle I'm considering for core
inclusion in my Theory of transcendent mental phenomena, though I think ideas
about the material realm are less important than ideas of time and agency.

Why Keep Mysteries Secret?

The greatest question raised by The Gnostic Paul is, why did
Paul not initiate everyone?Why did
Paul keep higher knowledge secret; why did he, like the other Greeks, refrain
from publically revealing the mystery?

My hypothesis, compatible with this book, is the agape
theory: the Greeks had profoundly mixed feelings about awakening to the tyranny
of fatedness, to the preset and even preexistent future (so to speak).Just as today's American culture refrains
from teaching children about sex, and protects them in a bubble of a special
childhood innocence, so also, I think, Greeks valued the innocent delusion of
the uninitiated who were so unrefined as to actually believe in metaphysical
free will.It was painfully obvious and
terrifyingly vivid to the Greeks that they lacked metaphysical free will, that
their futures were fixed, predetermined, closed, and preexistent, like a jail.

It is crucial for me to distinguish my views from those of
other thinkers.I found 3 concepts that
immediately place protective distance between my theory and others' theories of
spiritual enlightenment.

I could provide citations to support the following,
including Pagels' book (Romans 9:18, page 38, a main controvery between
heretics and orthodox was the question of free will; the heretics say salvation
is not in our power.)Reading this
book, I learned to distinguish my favored ideas from others' by asking,
"What theological ideas would utterly go against the religion created by
the Church Fathers?"Radical
determinism would utterly undermine their religion of guilt, bloody punishment,
and repeated bodily killing, and infinitely extended reward and punishment for
the moral agent.I agree with Calvinism
insofar as it moves away from the Catholic assertion of our personal moral
agency -- I part with Calvinism by taking it all the way: because our moral
power is utterly null and our salvation or damnation is predetermined by God's
omnipotence, there is no reason to retain (as Calvin does) belief in moral-reward
heaven or moral-punishment hell.I
unabashedly do the unthinkable and blame God/Ground/Self for evil -- we're just
vehicles that were timelessly steered and driven by his power at the moment all
spacetime was created.The Church
insists on moral agency and sin, against the heretics -- therefore I, with the
Valentinians, reject moral agency and being culpable of guilt.

The dark ages must have been so dark that when Calvinism
awoke and rebelled against the Catholic doctrine of egoic moral agency,
Calvinism illogically or habitually retained heaven and hell, which are the
places of eternal moral punishment and reward, though it rejected all
possibility of meriting such reward or punishment, having denied works as moral
achievement and having rejected our ability to generate our belief in Jesus by
our own effort.

I propose that the one thing the Greek civilization wished
for the most was the impossible: metaphysical free will -- genuine personal
responsible moral agency, sovereignty, authorship over one's own will.All the educated Greeks had the direct
experience of being killed as egos by time and Fate.The Greeks honored and cherished the foolish, childish belief in
moral agency and sovereign free will just as we now cherish the innocent fantasies
of childhood.I suppose the idea love
in Greek culture was not between man and man, but rather, between the initiated
and the uninitiated.

Early Paul talks about the relation of the initiated and the
uninitiated in terms of the metaphorical relation between man and woman.The one thing the Greeks longed for the most
was metaphysical free will, moral agency, personal sovereignty, and an open
future -- logically garbled and impossible fantasies that only the uninitiated
were able to believe in.

Having read The Gnostic Paul and glanced at some pop Gnostic
sites, I can now identify a few principles that immediately distance me from
everyone else, to distinguish the truth and reject the common lies of pop
spirituality:

oThere is no
historical Jesus, and the story of him tells of a swoon, a pseudo-death
comparable with the aborted sacrifice of Isaac.

oWe do not have
metaphysical free will; we are helpless puppets, or frozen worldlines with
essentially a preset, closed, preexistent future.

oEntheogens are the
primary path to gnosis; other approaches are secondary; Christ's flesh is the
entheogenic plant.

I could add: there is no supernatural -- but that's implicit
and so many people already agree, it doesn't distinguish me beyond the
above.If there is no Jesus and no
genuine moral agency, the orthodox story of moral-reward heaven and
moral-punishment hell collapses as irrelevant nonsense designed to prop up the
lie of egoic agency.I could also
specify that my concept of fatedness is distinct from conventional
reductionist, atomic-level determinism.

Those 3 principles together distinguish me from 99% of all
theorists of the transcendent.Few
Christians have heard of the Christ myth theory, few people know of the entheogenic
theory of the origin of religions, and everyone assumes that enlightenment
provides freedom rather than an awakening into metaphysical enslavement.

The last point above leads to the problem of recovering our
effective, virtual, apparent personal power after it has been humbled and
sacrificed.The religious myths
celebrate such a resurrection that can't originate in our own egoic effort but
can only be given to us as a gift by God or the Ground of Being.We find a scepter handed to us and a crown
placed on our heads after the great ego crash and reboot, but our new rulership
is now understood as only virtual, apparent, partial or shared rulership.Before, I thought I was sole sovereign
ruler.Know I know I am co-ruler with
the Ground or the God of the Ground, the God who controls Fate or is ruler of
Fate, and ruler over time.

Mistakes made by theorists in various groups:

oThe Christ-myth
theorists reject all supernatural aspects of Christianity, but are left with no
entheogen and no explanation of many difficulties, and no awareness of all the
controversies and Mystery-related questions.

oThe entheogen
theorists make the mistake of assuming the Historical Jesus view (Jesus
existed, and was a fantastically amazing moral and mystical teacher, though not
supernatural).They stop there and lack
the full shocking and stunning revelation of fatedness and its
ramifications.Some may philosophically
accept determinism, but not in the relevant way for grasping the ramifications.

You need all the main pieces to form the distinct Theory I
am defining: Jesus didn't exist, Christ exists in the entheogen, and the
entheogen presents a certain Christ rescuer as a solution for the problem of
ego death and fatedness.We have to get
rid of the supernatural *and* the irrelevant/distracting bodily Jesus, *and*
adopt the entheogen, *and* consider the entheogen to be the vehicle for the
holy spirit -- part of God -- *and* include the philosophy of ego death and
rebirth, *including* the mythic/mystic/philosophical concept of Christ as
mental sacrifice of ego to rescue and practically restabilize the ego.

This list of requirements explains why *none* of the
previous scholars has hit upon the potent complete core set of ideas yet.Those theorists either lack the entheogen,
or the philosophical insight, or the critical distinction between the vulgar,
bodily "Jesus" idea and the higher, profound "Christ" idea.

Because Pagels so clearly divides the contested theological
concepts into the Peter group and the Early Paul group, I could see that all
the ideas I reject are on Peter's side, along with the Church Fathers, whom I
despise as prohibitionists, and that all the ideas I embrace are on Early
Paul's side, which is to say, Valentinius' side.An enemy of the Church Fathers is an enemy of mine.

I agree wonderfully with the Valentinian gnostic views --
but why keep the Mystery secret?

The point that most mystifies me about these Valentinian
Gnostics is, why would you ever want to vow to not reveal the mystery to the
uninitiated?James Arthur in Mushrooms
and Mankind has clearly condemned inner circle mysteries as being associated
with the evil power-mongers who seek to gather all power to themselves through
abusive and oppressive means.

Assuming Early Paul and the Valentinians and the Greeks
(whom we so worship in dumb awe for their mysteries) were all fully
enlightened... why then did they declare the death penalty for revealing the
mysteries to the uninitiated?That's
the only point at which I balk from joining these mystery groups -- and I have
a reasonable theory supported by Wilber's agape idea, that God (the Self)
*loves* and cherishes separation, and separation is necessarily delusion.To protect the beloved woman or child that
is the fantasy of free will and personal moral agency held by the innocent and
naive, the fully mature mind must be like the mind of God, who *chose* to lose
himself in the apparent separateness of separate selves -- this is the love
held by the One for the Many; the central fire loves the sparks.

So the mystery is preserved and kept from the uninitiated
for their own good and health as deluded egos -- why do we tell children about
Santa Clause as a literal person instead of a mythic tradition from
Siberia?Why do we enjoy and love the
innocent limited and bounded world of the child, and work so hard to protect
their innocence that we sometimes seem to run our whole culture, even stunting
the adult freedoms, claiming we do it "for the good of the children"?Paul, with the rest of the civilized Greek
culture except perhaps for Socrates, chose to protect the deluded feeling of
free will by keeping the fact of puppethood hidden, occluded, obscured, covered
up.This is next on my list of
research: why did Greek culture treat possession of initiation like possession
of a loaded weapon that was a grave threat to society?

Society is based on a lie that every educated person admits
is a lie: the lie of moral responsible agency, as though we author our own
future and can simply be held accountable for what the Fates have already woven
for us like a vein in a rock -- as though we can come out of and thus be born
out of the rock of the spacetime block, becoming free and independent lords
over it.Publically admitting and
revealing the truth that we are helpless fate-puppets would threaten the legal
fabric of civilization -- *that* is what is so preciously delicate about
civilization.The Moral Law and moral
agency that the Jews took as legitimate strengthens the delusion of egoic power
and metaphysical freedom.(Ref: Mystery
Religions - Angus; Myth and Tragedy in Ancient Greece, The Mysteries [ed.
Campbell].)

But then the lie of the Law, the delusion of the physicalist,
literalist worshippers of the Moral Law, took over and ran rampant and
roughshod over culture, in the form of the Christian Church - worshipper of
egoic moral agency, suppresser of the entheogenic source of ego death and weary
wise knowledge of fate's tyranny.That
is the choice we have: the ego delusion (the lie, error), versus fate's tyranny
(the closed future, the reduction to puppet or slave status, as mere controlled
controllers, authored authors, and programmed programmers).

For several years, I struggled to conquer the problem of
re-understanding Christianity in terms of entheogen-triggered ego death and
related phenomena and philosophical insights about mental phenomena.What could the Jesus story really mean,
given these philosophical revelations about the mind, revealed by the
entheogenic holy spirit?Finally, with
books such as Strange Fruit, Apples of Apollo, The Christ Myth, and The Gnostic
Paul, the pieces have come together and I now have essentially a complete
entheogenic theory and theology of the Christ myth, combined with an unusually
simple, stark, yet unimpeachable theory of spacetime, determinism, and control
agency.

These revelations about the Early versus Later Paul, and the
way they perfectly lined up with the points of my theory as against the
supernaturalist scheme, theology, and value system of the Church Fathers, act
as the final major piece of the puzzle, the puzzle of making entheogenic *and*
philosophical sense out of the earliest forms of Christianity.I can account for the origin of Christianity
and the debates and the rewritings of scripture to force it from simple
metaphysical coherence as a rational Mystery into a supernaturalist fantasy
propping up the impossible lie of moral responsibility and metaphysical
freedom.

I'm just in time to publish before the U.S. economy weakens,
psychoactive drugs are legalized (prohibition is just too expensive, at $20
billion a year only to exacerbate the problems), and there is to be no more
Mystery.Do I really want to swing the
metaphysical sword, deliver the Bad News, that there is no metaphysical
freedom, that the future is closed, and undermine the legal lie of egoic
responsibility upon which our false civilization is constructed?Well, this responsibility-destroying
conceptual system is just a Theory, but when combined with the entheogen, it
does lead to the most phenomenal experience of all, ego death -- and some
acedia and despair that disturbed the wise but Fate-weary Greeks, from which
they needed the catharsis of the dramatizations such as Oedipus trying to elude
his ineluctable fate.

Don't say I'm being too subtle and profound.The theory I expound is based on the
principle of radical simplicity and least effort, finding the least complicated
view to defend.The Greeks considered
ego death so obvious, keeping it a secret (to preserve the civilized lie of
responsible egoic agency) was a constant challenge and was strictly enforced in
the courts: if you reveal our conventional, legal lie in public, we'll eliminate
you like we did Socrates.(The theory
of Socrates' crime being revealing the mysteries is so fitting, it hardly
matters whether it happens to be true.)

I bring maturity and ego death, and people don't entirely
like that new status, an abrupt but halting revolution.Shall we retreat back down into the lie of
Moral Law and egoic sovereign power?Can we have a civilization, with a legal system of responsibility, with
a clear theory that denies metaphysical responsible agency, with access to
entheogens to drive that point home via direct experience of ego-killing
block-universe Unity?

Ken Wilber has written some innovative comments on altered
states recently (Integral Psychology, A Theory of Everything).A peak experience is interpreted through and
thus limited by the current level of psyche development.He's right in saying that the psychedelics
community is predominantly regressive or magic-level, and is in that way
alienated from the mainstream -- but Wilber's tremendous mistake is ignoring
drug policy reform, which is a major cause of the present limited range of
psychedelics theorizing.